Tag: panic attack

I haven’t written in a while, just to write. Any spare time I have these days I seem to waste on mindless games or weaving needle like thoughts through my brain to see how much damage I can do in that short period of time. No one can hurt you quite like you hurt yourself.

I took this blog down while I was sorting through some things personally, and I thought I would drain it and start fresh. Delete the old and create a new space to send my little and sometimes big thoughts into. But, truth be told, I don’t want to.

Like me, this place is a culmination of my experiences. I can’t reboot myself and start over, so why should I do that here.

The story of my retreat and absence is typical, I think. I fell down the rabbit hole. And was pulled back up and out through a series of events that I might document later, because I feel like it might help someone else, someday. But not today.

Instead, I’m going to write from my head.

Last night, exhausted and stretched past my limited capacity for verbalizing the storm that churns inside my skull, I had a panic attack.

I have not hyperventilated since I was in high school. I might have come close a few times, but last night, I literally felt like I was suffocating.

My wonderful hubby and I were lying in my beautiful blanket fort, strung with fairy lights and feeling safe and sweet in this perfect cocoon he built me, I thought I might just slip into sleep. I am stressed at work and home and in basically every facet of my life. And I’m not handling it well, so I’m just tired. All the time. Very, very tired.

I was sleepy, but he was talking and my mind was turning over all the things I hadn’t done this week, all the things I wanted to do, all the ways I’ve disappointed him. And his words sliced through everything else, reminding me how much I’ve disappointed myself. And like a weld breaking inside my chest, like a concrete mixer cracking open, everything gushed out and simultaneously seized up.

And I felt ridiculous.

I pushed away from him, gasping and trying to pull in air. I felt like I was dying. I might have wished that I would. Because the truth behind that panic attack was that I couldn’t believe I was the person I had ALWAYS feared becoming.

Being the rational, independent, capable, modern woman that I am, I brought myself under control. It took some time, and I’m sorry to him that meant some of my walls went back up. Sometimes, control and hiding go hand in hand. Sometimes, I cannot escape my need to wrap up life in a brown paper package and tie it up with a string. If everything is neatly put away, I can pretend it’s dealt with.

I can pretend that I’m ok.

I have a whole lifetime, forty years, of pretending to be ok. What’s one more time?

But now, he knows how much I hide. And he keeps telling me not to. He keeps making me talk to him. And I wonder if that is why I panicked.

Time will tell if we can get through this, make things “ok” again, or if we’ll just pretend.

I don’t want to though. Despite how much part of might want to leave, the more important part of me, the part that is his wife, the mother of his kids, the woman he saved all those years ago, she wants to stay and fight and make it work.

I hope she doesn’t have to kill this other part in the process.